Current news and ideas on body health and maintenance

Bones

Your bones perform the obvious task of holding your body up by forming a rigid and strong light weight frame- your skeleton. It is held in place and propelled by your muscles. Bone also provides protection for your brain encased inside your skull and your ribcage protects your heart and lungs. Bone might look dead from the outside but there is plenty of cellular activity going on within that is constantly forming new bone and blood cells via it’s marrow.

The adult body contains 206 bones, the two major categories of bone are tubular bone that are present in your arms and legs and flat bone as found in your shoulder blades, pelvis, ribs and skull. Bones can fracture, form tumours, can be deformed through diseases like polio and pagets disease, lose their density through osteoporosis, acquire hard to cure infections and can be misshaped through chronic postural stresses.

Posture has a big effect on how bones grow, a forensic scientist for instance can look at the remains of a soldier dead for 300 years and tell he was an archer because of uneven bone shapes in his rib cage (playing regular golf over many years can do this too). The skeleton of a hunch back looks just as crooked on the inside as it does on the outside. When your bones are deformed congenitally there is not alot you can easily do about it but if you are a chronic sloucher you are making the rest of your life needlessly difficult for yourself.

The continuous pressure of bad posture eventually bends a bone like a wire does on a bonsai plant. What starts out as a minor postural fault if not corrected turns into a much more obvious postural problem. Uneven leg lengths can cause the lower rib cage to distend on the opposite side of the body from the short leg tipping the body diagonally backwards as you stand and step forward. If you have a leg that is longer than the other corrective footwear can not only help you walk better it can make you look better too.

One of the better known causes of weak bones (osteoporosis) is by insufficient dietary calcium and bones losing density hormonally in post- menopause in women. Other factors such as the consumption of sugar and carbonated drinks, smoking and lack of exercise can also contribute to a loss of bone density. So can medications like corticosteroids.

The bones along with your muscles, tendons, fascia, ligaments and cartilage form your muscular skeletal system, none of these tissues really mean anything without each other, together they are considered to be a functioning unit.

Standing and sitting straight and doing suitable regular exercise helps keep your bones strong and in the right shape. If keeping a straight spine is uncomfortable a good place to start getting better posture is massage and Self Massage.